Month: June 2004

Almost three years after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the United States is still falling short in its ability to deal with weak, failing or failed states, which increasingly threaten U.S. national security, says a major report released here Tuesday by a bipartisan commission. Washington must do far … Continue reading “Weak States Are ‘Sleeping Giants’ for US Security”

I was nonplussed by all the Reagan encomia until I caught his address to the ’92 GOP convention on C-Span late Sunday night. He was showing his age, but that essential glimmer still came through. I was actually there in Houston when Reagan spoke, though I don’t remember if I was in the Astrodome that … Continue reading “What Would Reagan Do?”

After declaring a war on terrorism, the Bush Administration has gotten us into two unwinnable wars, Afghanistan and Iraq. The war on terrorism is not a war; it is a state of affairs. There is no one enemy to conquer, no land to capture, no way to know when we have won the war. Basically, … Continue reading “Pride, Patriotism, and Propaganda”

In the words of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind, Memorial Day weekend was all about “War, war, war!” In addition to the real ceremonies, the History Channel and the old movie channels featured nonstop war movies and documentaries. This was quickly followed by the 60th anniversary of the invasion of Europe. Anyone with … Continue reading “War! War! War!”

A classified Pentagon report, providing a series of legal arguments apparently intended to justify abuses and torture against detainees, appears to undermine public assurances by senior U.S. officials, including President George W. Bush, that the military would never resort to such practices in the “war on terrorism.” Short excerpts of the report, which was drafted … Continue reading “How High Does the Abu Ghraib Scandal Go?”

Since the passage of the “Iraq Liberation Act” in 1998, the U.S. government has spent more than 40 million taxpayer dollars on the Iraqi National Congress and its leader Ahmed Chalabi. As we now know, Chalabi in turn fed the U.S. government lies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda in the … Continue reading “Superpower or Superdebtor?”

http://www.independent.org/tii/antiwar/e040608.html

I just said goodbye to my son, age 21, as he went off to complete his studies at the University of Toronto. We were cleaning out the garage during the two weeks my son was home. I came across some old pictures and documents from my years in the Navy, including a copy of a … Continue reading “The War on Terror: A Persistent Debacle”

Once more, Americans will be forced to vote for a man instead of a policy. It doesn’t say much for self-government that the American people are almost never given a chance to vote on major policy issues. The trouble is that Sen. John Kerry, as his campaign has developed, is saying essentially this: I support … Continue reading “No Real Choice”

A Note from the Author: This is a continuation of my Wednesday column on the formerly libertarian Cato Institute’s complete capitulation to the war hysteria, and is best read in that context. To summarize briefly: in endorsing Attorney General John Ashcroft’s decision to start "monitoring" political groups for evidence of subversive activities, I wrote, Cato … Continue reading “TURN TOWARD THE LEFT”